Andrea Contin. Secondo giusta misura

From April 9 to 19, 2026, for the fourth edition of Collateral. Mostre al CUBO—a program curated by Elisabetta Longari for the foyer of PACTA dei Teatri, presenting installations connected to the themes of the performances on the bill—Andrea Contin presents Secondo giusta misura. The project, whose title echoes Heraclitus’ fragment in which fire is conceived as a living principle that ignites and extinguishes according to a just measure, is conceived in relation to the performance The Picture of Dorian Gray, based on the novel by Oscar Wilde.

Andrea Contin, Flame (chains), 2013, courtesy l'artista, foto Simone Falso

The project unfolds around Flame (chains), a 2013 video in which a figure, crossed by the circular motion of chains of fire, traces a sequence of luminous lines in the dark space—like a temporary, unstable form of writing. Alongside the full-body version, a second projection focuses on the face, where light engraves and transforms the features, revealing an inner tension rather than a defined physiognomy.

The installation is completed by a series of previously unseen drawings, which extend the field of the work without making its process explicit, like fragments of an image that continues to shift. In dialogue with The Picture of Dorian Gray, Secondo giusta misura stages a possible relationship between image and identity. If in the novel the transformation of the soul settles into the portrait, here it emerges in gesture and fire, in a form that appears and dissolves at the same instant.

The body does not represent, but becomes the site of a tension, traversed by an energy that manifests and disperses at once. Without assuming an illustrative function, the intervention inhabits the foyer as a visual and perceptual threshold—an image that accompanies the viewer toward the stage while simultaneously extending its echo.